Letter from Linus Pauling to Peter Pauling. March 10, 1953.Linus first discusses financial matters with Peter in regards to travel, before conveying
his flight details to London. He writes that he recently visited UC-Riverside to examine
a collection of organic phosphate compounds, and that he has obtained samples of various
phosphate diesters, which will be useful in the nucleic acid work. He further discusses
the sports car purchase he may make in Europe. Linus then discusses the nucleic acids.
He states that it is still not clear to him, through Peter's correspondence and a
letter from Watson to Delbrück that Linus has obtained, what the Watson-Crick structure
is. Linus mentions that he has solved many of the spatial issues of his molecule by
rotating the phosphate groups and notes as well that Rosalind Franklin just wrote
to him and that she feels strongly that the phosphate groups must be located on the
outside of the molecule. Linus has assumed that the phosphates were located in the
center of the molecule all along and further notes that he doesn't think much of the
argument of the instability of his DNA molecule due to the packing of negative charges,
mentioning other molecules that also have close negative charges. Linus also suggests
that RNA could take a similar form to his DNA structure, with some modification. Linus
closes his letter by mentioning his recent focus on ferromagnetism. Transcript.